Chapter Fourteen Race and Ethnicity

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Chapter FourteenRace and Ethnicity

• John J. Macionis 10th EditionSociology

Created by Lori Ann Fowler
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The Social Meaning of Race and Ethnicity

• Race a socially constructed category composed
  of people who share biologically transmitted
  traits that members of a society consider
  important.
• Ethnicity a shared cultural heritage.
• Race involves highlighting biological traits.
• Ethnicity involves highlighting cultural traits.

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Table 14-1 Racial and Ethnic Categories In the
United States 2000
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Minorities

• A minority any category of people,
  distinguished by physical or cultural difference,
  that a society sets apart and subordinates.
• Minorities have two major characteristics
• (1) They share a distinctive identity.
• (2) Subordination

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National Map 14-1 Where the Minority-Majority
Already Exists
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Prejudice

• Prejudice a rigid and irrational generalization
  about an entire category of people.
• Prejudgments that are positive or negative.
• They lead us to characterize all members of an
  entire group, most of whom weve never met.

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Stereotypes and Racism

• Stereotypes an exaggerated description applied
  to every person in some category.
• Both the majority group and minorities hold
  stereotypical beliefs.

• Racism the belief that one racial category is
  innately superior or inferior to another.
• Racial difference in mental abilities result from
  environment rather than biology.

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Theories of Prejudice

• Scapegoat Theory prejudice springs from
  frustration among people who are themselves
  disadvantaged.
• A scapegoat a person with little power whom
  people unfairly blame for their own troubles.

• Authoritarian Personality Theory extreme
  prejudice is a personality trait in certain
  individuals.
• These personalities are common among those with
  little education and broken homes.

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Theories of Prejudice

• Culture Theory extreme prejudice may be
  embedded in culture.
• Bogardus believed everyone in the United States
  expresses some bigotry because we live in a
  culture of prejudice.

• Conflict Theory powerful people use prejudice
  to justify oppressing others.
• Steele contends that minorities themselves
  cultivate a climate of race consciousness in
  order to win greater power.

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Discrimination

• Discrimination treating various categories of
  people unequally.
• This can be either negative or positive.
• Prejudice and discrimination often occur
  together.
• Robert Merton classified four types.

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Majority and MinorityPatterns of Interaction

• Pluralism a state in which racial and ethnic
  minorities are distinct but have social parity.
• The United States promises equal standing under
  the law.
• Assimilation the process by which minorities
  gradually adopt patterns of the dominant category.

• Segregation the physical and social separation
  of categories of people.
• This has declined during recent decades.
• Genocide the systematic killing of one category
  of people by another.

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Race and Ethnicity in the United StatesNative
Americans

• When the Europeans arrived in the fifteenth
  century, the Native Americans numbered in the
  millions.
• By 1900, they numbered a mere 250,000.
• Christopher Columbus first called them Indians
  because he thought he landed in India.
• Not until 1924 were Native Americans entitled to
  citizenship.

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Table 14-2 The Social Standing of Native
Americans, 2000
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Race and Ethnicity in the United StatesWhite
Anglo-Saxon Protestants

• WASPs were not the first to inhabit the United
  States, but they came to dominate this nation.
• Historically, WASP immigrants were highly skilled
  and motivated to achieve the Protestant work
  ethic.
• WASPs were never one single group.
• English remains the dominant language today, and
  Protestantism is the majority religion.

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National Map 14-3 The Concentration of People of
WASP Ancestry across the United States
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Race and Ethnicity in the United StatesAfrican
Americans

• Most accounts mark the beginning of black history
  in the United States as 1619.
• A Dutch trading ship brought twenty Africans to
  Jamestown, Virginia.
• Slavery was the foundation of the southern
  colonies plantation system.
• In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed
  slavery.
• In the 1950s and 60s, the civil rights movement
  grew.

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Table 14-3 The Social Standing of African
Americans, 2001
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Race and Ethnicity in the United StatesAsian
Americans

• Enormous cultural diversity characterizes this
  category of people.
• In 2000, the total number of Asian Americans
  exceeded 10 million.
• The largest category of Asian Americans is people
  of Chinese ancestry.
• More than one-third of Asian Americans live in
  California.

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Table 14-4 The Social Standing of Asian
Americans, 2000
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Race and Ethnicity in the United StatesHispanic
Americans

• In 2000, Hispanic Americans numbered more than 35
  million.
• Few people in this category describe themselves
  as Hispanic or Latino.
• Hispanics are really a cluster of distinct
  populations, each of which identifies with a
  particular ancestral nation.
• Most of the Hispanic population lives in the
  Southwest.

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Table 14-5 The Social Standing of Hispanic
Americans, 2000